New agency to assess city properties for tax
■ GHMC revenue staff have been wrongly valuing assets
With the GHMC shelving its plan to revise property tax rates and focus on taxing unassessed and miscellaneous properties within the tax net.
The assessment through satellite pictures did not prove effective and the corporation has been exploring the option of hiring a private agency to assess every property in the city and submit a report.
Officials said that the revenue staff and the ground-level staff were hand in glove with several property owners and had been wrongly assessing the properties.
This in turn had led to losses of more than `1,000 crore in income for the civic body.
In 2017-18, though
`1,320 crore was collected, fewer people paid taxes with their number stood at 12,18,335. Of the total collections, about
`394 crore was from residential properties, `867 crore from non-residential properties and `58.40 crore on mixed-category properties. The GHMC has fixed a target of collecting `1,694 crore through property tax. With 60 days remaining for the end of the financial year, the corporation has managed to meet only 50 per cent of its target at `887 crore.
Highly placed sources said the civic body had the potential to enhance the residential property tax collected to at least `800 crore from the demand of `500 crore. Similarly, property tax demand for commercial buildings could be enhanced to `1,600 crore from the existing `1,100 crore demand.
Currently, bill collectors at the ground level have been wrongly assessing the structures. Sources said that if the irregularities were curbed, the corporation could collect at least `2,500 crore for the current financial year.
A senior GHMC official said that the corporation would use satellite pictures only to capture the number of properties. He said that the corporation had decided to hire a private agency, which had expertise in assessing the properties, which would inspect every property and assess them accurately. He said the corporation would bring all unassessed properties, including miscellaneous ones, into the tax net to reach the target.
The official said that the corporation had the potential to collect `4,000 crore through property tax for every financial year if every property in the city was assessed accurately.